You'all scare me...................
 

I really love my Boxster, but ...........is the Porsche Boxster a dependable car, or not?

I read about IMS failures, and bigger IMS's that can't be fixed without engine teardown, and that we have to have Jake install his mods for a more dependable engine, etc., etc.

I have a 2007 Boxster S with 45K miles, and I am scared to death that at any time my car will blow up and become a piece of junk. Should I be worried, or is there a good chance that this thing will last me another 50K+ miles (without spending a king's ransom)? I drive it daily (mostly highway) and I drive it normally; don't race or abuse. All services are done when scheduled.

Anyone out there that has a boxster with 100K on their original engine?

Maybe, for carefree driving, I need to start looking at the BMW Z4, Lexus SC430, Nissan, or maybe even a Mazda, while i still have some trade-in value on my Porsche.

Look, the M96 engine is known to have some issues. Some don't live to see old age, but many do. I'm aware of more than one with over 200,000 miles on them. Enjoy the car, but don't immerse your head in the sand thinking that all (or any) of them are guaranteed bullet proof; they are not. But then neither are any of the others you mentioned.............

2007 engines are a lot better than the 97-99. I believe this is where most the d-chunk and IMS failures are. Worried, get an extended warranty and in the mean time, drive and enjoy. :cheers:

Actually, anyone that has an intermediate shaft can (and do) have the dreaded IMS failure; so that is right up to the latest, and shaft-less versions of 2009………….

I contribute to a couple of the UK Porsche magazines and the general consensus by the British experts (Autofarm & Hartech Engineering) follows the same advice as Flat 6 and LN Engineering - change the engine oil & filter more frequently than Porsche recommends, use a very good synthetic oil, and keep on top of the maintenance schedule, ie don't put off what needs to be done.

About 8 years ago I bought an early MX-5 (Miata in the US) and then started reading about massive failures of the short nose cranks, diff failures, water pump shafts snapping etc etc. I was kept awake at nights and continually checking the crank pulley for the tell tale wobble....
I kept the car for 4 years and never experienced any of the above, nore did I hear of any breakages in the MX-5 club here in Australia.

I then bought a Mazda RX-8 and found the websites full of blown apex seals, huge replacement engine $$ costs for high oil usage, Mazda building an engine re-man plant in the US to help stem the flood of broken engines, having to add oil to the fuel to assist seal wear etc, etc.

Sound familiar ??

Honestly, the real truth lies not in listening to ALL the hype on the internet but taking a long carefull look at what reputable, knowlegable experts tell us and see if their recommendations fit in with what we expect from our cars.

It's like anything....the more you obsess about it, the more you will find negative press to bak up your fears....like plane crashes or cancer or....I was the same way when I first bought mine ('01 Boxster) but now I just try to enjoy the hell out of it and take very good care of it.

How about a Boxster with 238k miles on the original engine.
 

Let me know when you find an engine design without faults.

I own a Honda and an Acura of around the same year/miles as my '01S 58k Boxster. All maintained better than by the book. Boxster most reliable by far. Least expensive to own. Least trips to repair shop. Best miles/gal too.

I believe the consensus is that actual engine failures are in the low single digit percentage region. On the one hand, that's pretty bad if true compared to what you might expect from a properly engineered engine. On the other, think of it this way - if you ran 50 Boxsters in parallel, you'd probably only expect one of the engines to fail. In that context, if you only buy a single Boxster you'd have to be fairly lucky for it to be the one that dies.

The way people talk about it, it seems like you're really rolling the dice on a 50/50 chance of the engine going pop. But I don't think it's anything like that bad a risk.

My subjective take is that yes, the Box engine has design flaws and yes, they are more than one might find in a chevy small block or Lexus V8.

The larger issue is the cost of the flaw. I think that gets to the heart of the issue. If one could find a rebuild for three grand or so, this may be less alarming.

If it were me, I would run Red Line Oil and change it out at no more than 7500 miles or 6 months.

I've had previous Boxster cars but didn't know about any of the RMS or IMS issues. I drove the cars all over and never had a care in the world. More importantly. never had an issue with either of the cars. Now I find myself thinking about getting another Boxster S (987) and all I can think about is the IMS issue. Upper $40's for an 09 is too much for me now so I will be looking at an 05 or so. Hopefully for us buyers the winter months will bring the prices down even more....

I was the same way. I freaked out when I found this site after buying my 01. Luckily the dealer OK'd my IMS, repaired anything it needed, so now I just drive it.

My dad did get scared out of buying one though after surfing this and a couple other sites. He was going to trade his 03 350z for a 04 05 box, but opted to keep it after hearing about the IMS issue. I tried to tell him that you're really only hearing from the people that have the issue and that all the satisfied owners usually go unnoticed, just like with anything. But the damage was already done.

It seems like if you just get the PPI done, change the oil every 5k, and have the preventative maintanance done, they'll drive for a long time. So at that point, what's the difference between this and any other car?

I've not had a single Porsche in our facility this year with over 95K miles on the clock...

Last year we only had one, it failed at 103K.

Keep in mind that we generally don't see cars that don't have issues, serious issues that can't be solved by others with confidence.

This year the failure of all failures were water pump related issues resulting in intermix and lost engines.

Luckily more and more people are scheduling preventive procedures with us to keep these things from occurring, its taken several years for people to wake up to the fact that if the preventives aren't done some failure that could have been avoided will take the engine out.

How many IMS updates do you do a month?

Fact: The classifieds have plenty of cars over 95k, at least the biggest classified car website here in the UK does.

136k

121k

Etc, etc, plenty more cars north of 100k.

Any suggestion such cars don't exist is clearly false. I very much doubt it's any different in the US.

Admittedly, I don't see any cars north of 150,000 miles. Whether that's because people tend not to use cars like these as daily drivers or because the cars are failing before this mileage is impossible to say.

We have 4 IMSR procedures scheduled for December...

I never said that hundred thousand plus mile cars don't exist, I said we haven't had any in our facility this year with that many miles.. And like I said, most cars have been at our facility because they have failed- we don't do general service work or simple repairs like an INDY shop.

Like I said, finally people are seeing that issues can happen to anyone and any car and they are taking the required steps to ensure their engine is properly protected. All the cars we saw this year with intermix could have avoided that failure with a simple water pump replacement..

We see more failed engines than anyone in the US, because the failure prevention and repair is our primary focus along with engine development.. I expect tomorrow to be a busy day on the phones, any "failure Monday" is busy but after a 4 day weekend we might set another record!

Precisely. So as a group they tend to have lower mileage.



Add to the fact that we are dealing with a group of cars that can be (in the case of the '97) up to 14 years old. In general how reliable is any 14 year old car??? I strongly suspect the Boxster is better than average.


Need to keep some perspective sometimes. My 1999 BMW is long gone...





/

Fair enough. What exactly was your point, then, in highlighting that you haven't seen any cars above 95k this year and only one last year? On the face of it, the clear inference is that such cars are at the very least quite rare.

The point was all the failures we've seen this year have occurred with vehicles less than 100K miles.

Many more people use the M96 powered Porsches for daily driving than ealier Porsche models.. Thats because they have creature comforts that the older cars simply didn't have..

Good A/C, real heat, power brakes and power steering are not things my first few generations of Porsches had.. Due to that those cars were 2nd, 3rd of 4th vehicles where many Boxsters are primary vehicles...

OK, and what do you learn from that?

My car has 73.5k, I bought it at 62k in feb.

I didn't know about the IMS issues before I bought but I did get a PPI (not a very good one apparently)

I lost sleep a few nights due to worrying about the car breaking, but then I realized something.

The cars isn't fun if you worry about it constantly.

I drive the piss out of mine at least once per week, usually more.


The only major issue I've had was replacing the WP even though it had been replaced just before I bought it(or so they say).


If something breaks, oh well, it's just money. But if a 1k repair is going to break the bank, you really shouldn't have one of these anyway.

Buy it, drive it hard.

You have no way of knowing how many of those cars have had engine trouble in the past.

That is very true. However, without any specific information they could just as easily be on the original engine as not.

Moreover, with high mile cars, advertisers usually go out of their way to highlight if the engine has been replaced and is carry significantly fewer miles than the chassis. Ya know, odo shows 130,000 but new engine fitted 40,000 miles ago. This is common in the UK at least. None of the ads I looked at mentions replacement engines.

I suspect if any of cars had engine replacements it would have been a good while ago as these cars have long since ceased to be economical to repair should the worse happen.

The other point to note about the anecdotal observation that nearly all engines failures happen at relatively low miles is that you might also conclude that the higher mile engines are the proven good ones. So if you do see one with 100k up on the original lump, you know it's a goodun'.

Frankly, I don't know if that's true. I just don't really follow Mr Raby's contribution in this thread. His comment seems to be a clear attempt to infer that these lumps don't seem to last beyond 100k, but he seems unwilling to come out and say that. If that's not what he is inferring, then I'm not sure what we are supposed to learn from his comment.

Personally, I think these engines probably are prone to many, many more failures than an equivalent, say, BMW six-cylinder engine. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's terribly likely you'll experience the worst yourself. Exactly what the chances of actual failure are in a well maintained engine I think is super hard to judge. If you read enough of these threads you might come away with the impression that it's 50/50. I doubt it's as bad as that. But I guess we will never know.

I don't think most are concerned with the 1k bills, it's the multi-k bills resulting from a blown engine.

pothole,
I think what Jake Raby is trying to get over is that all of the broken engines he has seen this year have been comparativly low mileage (under 100,000 miles) catastrophic failures as apposed to "worn out" by high mileage.
Probably if he was in the servicing game instead of the "Help, my egine's just died, what can I do" game, he would see a lot more high mileage M96 engined cars in his shop.

I own a Chevy small block that has better performance, and better mileage, and has far fewer faults than a Porsche engine. If I had been driving that car on the track, it would not have failed. Most people would agree that a Honda engine requires very little repairs. In fact, you're the first person I've ever heard that doesn't swear by the reliability of Hondas.

My opinion is that these engines are designed to be throw away engines. There are a lot of flaws in these engines that just shouldn't be there, and apparently, won't ever be changed.

I can't argue that IMS failure is *possible* for any car up to 2009 -- but I have never read any actual owner reports of an IMS failure since the 2006 IMS redesign. I see fair numbers of failure reports on 2005's and early 2006's, but I have never seen an actual IMS failure report for later 2006's, 2007's, or 2008's from someone who personally suffered such a failure. In fact, I've only seen a couple of engine failure reports for these years at all, and those were both cars being tracked, and the failure was thought to be oil starvation. If you can point me to an IMS failure report for a late-model 987, please do so and I will gladly retract this.

After 9 years of trying and trying to fix the problem, it is logical to think that Porsche would have provided a *better* IMS in the 2006-up IMS's than in the old ones. Not infallible, for sure, but likely better and less likely to fail.

While I can't direct you to a "report", I can tell you we just did an engine replacement in an '07 with an IMS engine failure, and I personally know of at least three more that fall into your suspect model years category; I have also talked to three dealers in my area that have seen one or more of them as well. What is not known is if the larger assembly was any better or worse than the earlier designs. And as a further reference point, the larger (and final) IMS bearing assembly appeared in M96's as early as the second half of 2005, so these newer designs are only recently getting into the IMS “sweet spot” mileage, so the ones known to exist may only be the “tip of the iceberg” as for the most part, many of the later failures were covered under warranty, so no knowledgeable individual outside of the dealer network may have had a chance to examine the engine before it went back to Germany, so the owner may not have been given all the pertinent data……… But, in any case, the larger IMS bearing definitely did not end the issue…………..

Thanks for the replies................
 

and I take away the general feeling that these engines are marginal, at best, and that there is a 50/50 chance of having some failure before reaching that 100K miles mark. I do understand that other brands fail as well, but normally to the tune of a $3K repair jobs, not $20K+, and the cars costing at only 1/2 of the price of a Boxster.

As others have said, don't obsess about it, and I take that as good advise. I'll continue to drive the car, enjoy the ride, and perform the scheduled maintenances when required. I hope I can report to you in five years that my car is still 'alive', but............if it breaks, it breaks. How disappointed I will be, but I think from then on, you'll see me driving in something else that has a more proven reliability record, i.e., Honda, BMW, small block Chevy, or something similar.

Anything mechanical will wear out if the service life is long enough and any machine will break. No engine is completely bullet proof when making a decent amount of power. All this is easy for me to state and understand as I've been breaking stuff my entire life.

The M96 does have it's share of problems and the majority of these could have been avoided if the MFR had stated a more definitive set of service directives that require scheduled replacements of some high risk components.

A good example is the water pump, if the directives would have stated to change the water pump after 3 years, no matter the mileage I would have 4 cars on our property right now with failed engines. If the IMS bearing retrofit was required at 40K miles most of the cars we see with IMS failures also would avoid the issues as well.

With other cars its totally normal to change a timing belt at 60K miles and doing so is required, if not the engine will implode just like an M96 does with an IMS bearing failure. changing these timing belts can easily cost as much as an IMSR procedure. The difference is the directives tell technicians and owners that this needs to be done.

The M96 was hyped up to be much more reliable than it's aircooled predecessors which made the cars more appealing to a different group of driver. Unfortunately that group of driver's bought the car for the wrong reason in lots of instances and have treated it like a Toyota or Honda and thats what has made a big impact on the failures we see.

Drive the car like a Porsche, maintain the car like a Porsche and use your common sense to replace components before they fail and you'll have a much better experience with the M96 powered Porsche.

That said, I had a car come in on Friday for an IMSR (04 Boxster) that was to be done as a preventive measure. In our pre- IMSR evaluation we found that the engine had compression numbers 50-60 PSI low on all cylinders. We talked to the owner and he said that 10 days before the car was shipped to us that it had an episode where it smoked briefly and then started to run poorly.

With 34K on the clock and having been insanely maintained, this one is unexplained as to why it lost compression on all 6 cylinders evenly. What was going to be a quick IMSR/ Water pump/ AOS upgrade turned into another 18K expenditure. This one surprised all of us involved and it'll be interesting to see what truly took the engine out.

Its a good thing this car came to us for the IMSR as we do an extensive pre-eval that showed this issue before we spent 3,500.00 of the owner's money to upgrade an engine that was already failed, but still ran.

No freeking way there is a 50% chance of failure
 

And I'd surmise no one knows for sure exactly what it is, not even Porsche (as many of the cars Jake sees wouldn't be in their statistics).

My impression is you have a 1-3% chance of failure per year driven. Maybe more if poorly maintained or seldom driven. On the lower side is you do things right.

IIRC: The highest mileage Porsche Boxster I know of (Marc) is over 238k miles on the original engine. Pedro's engine blew at 207k on the track (after lots of track/AX time) but not from an IMS failure. Both are older cars with lots of miles. Both have original IMSs. Both were maintained much better than the book by Porsche knowledgeable folk. One was generally dealer maintained, one was owner maintained.

Correction Mike, Pedro's engine had the LN retrofit in it when it blew, I believe from a rod failure not related to the IMS...................

All this IMS talk has be once again debating an 05 S and doing the IMS upgrade or spending more for an 09 S.

Jfp
 

You may be right on Pedro's engine...and the LN bearing was put in at what mileage? Probably 160k+ as it hasn't been out that long and my last said the longest mileage on the LN part was at about 30k.

I was responding to multiple points from prior posters..that there was a 50% failure rate and that there were few cars with many many miles on an IMS. Neither of which assertions my readings cause me to agree with. And trying to use Pedro's car as an example because it had so many miles on the original engine and failed not from an IMS problem and not on normal roads in normal driving style..though perhaps it was for him.

And if someone is worried about that risk, what about the other 4-6 potential causes of failure that we hear of? I figure I've over- improved too many of my cars.

What are the odds of 3 tail lights burning out on the wife's Acura at the same time? I replaced all 4 but then the cost was $2.50 for the extra bulb and my labor is cheap.

I have to agree with some of your points Mike; I don't think the IMS failure rate is anywhere near 50%; or even 25% for that matter. Problem is that we are never going to know the real failure rate; that said, I know for a fact it does happen, and at some rate that is high enough to be discomforting to anyone with an M96/7, including the post 2006 units with the "last attempt" large diameter IMS bearing. The biggest issues are that it often gives little, if any warning; and the results are catastrophic, both mechanically and financially. And, yes, there are sevaral examples of very high mile cars with the OEM IMS in them.

Fortunately, there are ways to deal with it. So rather than sit around and endlessly debate it, perhaps it is time for those concerned to become pro-active.

Game, Set, Match.

Percentages are worthless to discuss, everyone wants a "number" to either scare them to death or make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.. Fact is, no one knows exactly how many engines were built, and without that data no percentage can be figured.

Pedro's engine had only been IMS Retrofitted for a couple of months before it snapped a rod in half. Last time I talked to him he was looking for another used engine and I recommended that he just remove the IMS bearing from the scattered engine and use it again in the replacement. I have no idea if he did this or not.

How good is your luck? Thats just about what it equates to and thats no joke.

Taking your chances with this engine is like Russian Roulette, instead of a revolver holding 6 rounds, the engine has 6 cylinders. Sometimes you hear a bang, sometimes you don't.

Only 30k on the longest run IMSR? That's it? I wish I could be a test bed for it, I drove my Box 18,000 miles in the last 7 months and by 12 months I'd be close to 30k. I'm paranoid about the IMS, water pump, AOS, etc but I'm trying to keep on the maintenence and drive it alot.

I don't think people realize how low the mileage is on a lot of these cars are due to limited or seasonal use; we had an 01S up on the lift today getting it ready to go into hibernation for the winter, original owner, 9,734 miles.................

When it comes to the LN retrofit, look at the numbers differently: Over 1,000 units on the road, zero failures...................

I just can't believe how little people drive these cars. People probably think I'm abusing my car because I drive it so much, even through the snow.

So what are the weak parts of these cars, specifically 987?

IMS- knew about it
RMS- knew about it
Alternator- did not know? new to me
Water pump-again, new to me
AOS-new to me

So in an 05 S it would be wise to upgrade to the LN IMS, but what about the other issues? Is it necessary to replace the waterpump, etc in these cars? If so, that is a significant amount on money to put into a new to me car.

And to think I've owned a few Boxster cars before and never had an issue!